It’s always been tough at the top, but business leaders think life is being made harder by laid-back colleagues.
That is one of the conclusions from a study of the stresses encountered by chief executives, which found they were facing “mounting pressure and increasingly bearing the weight of that accountability alone” as other senior staff did not share the “same urgency”.
A survey of 3,200 chief executives and senior executives in 11 countries by AlixPartners, the consulting firm, found that chief executives were “feeling the brunt of the pressure as uncertainty surges”.
Seven out of ten chief executives said they felt pressured by high levels of “disruption”, or challenges to their businesses. However, fewer than four in ten of their “C-suite” colleagues — the corporate jargon for any senior staff with chief in their job titles — said the same. AlixPartners said this was the widest gap it had seen in the seven years it has been running the study.
In the UK, more than 40 per cent of chief executives said their leadership teams lacked the agility to keep up with competitors, the highest proportion globally.
Chief executives were more likely than senior colleagues to expect significant business model change and to be worried about the ability of the executive team. They were far less likely to be worried about rising trade protectionism, however.
Alix’s annual “disruption index” found that close to half of chief executives feared losing their jobs and four in ten reported feeling more anxious in their roles than last year. More than seven in ten said it was getting more difficult to determine which disruptive forces to prioritise, a slightly higher proportion than said the same last year.
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Key concerns among chief executives included inflation, staff layoffs linked to artificial intelligence, geopolitical uncertainty and regulation, as well as tax.
Overall, executives reported experiencing slightly less pressure from disruptive forces than last year, but the study found they were “still grappling with anxiety, insecurity, and uncertainty” as they entered the new year.
Rob Hornby, co-chief executive of AlixPartners, said there was “a growing disconnect at the top of British and global business”.
He added: “Today’s CEOs are full-time stakeholder managers, grappling with a relentless and increasingly complex wave of disruptive forces that are difficult to prioritise. Their teams don’t share the same urgency. This perception gap is a major vulnerability.”